


Thirty-Six Possible Worlds

by Trismegistus (Lebateleur)



Category: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street - Natasha Pulley
Genre: Angst, Introspection, M/M, Missing Scene, Mutually Unrequited, Pre-Relationship, Stories within Stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:04:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9579626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lebateleur/pseuds/Trismegistus
Summary: Thaniel listened for a while longer, because the silence was so deep and clear that he could hear ghosts of the thirty-six of thirty-seven possible worlds in which Grace had not won at the roulette, and not stepped backward into him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Synergic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synergic/gifts).



Thaniel hadn't moved from his seat on the hearth. He was steeling himself to say something, but the words were changing so rapidly Mori's memories of them multiplied too quickly to follow. He grabbed at them but they slipped through his fingers, insubstantial as dust motes. A moment later, they were gone as though they hadn't existed at all.

All he could remember now was Thaniel sitting there in silence for as long as Mori would let him. His hands tensed in his lap. 'Anyway, I might go to bed. I'm getting drunk. Good night, Mr Steepleton.' He stood and made his way up the stairs. It felt as though lead weights had been tied to each foot. 

It can't be helped, he told himself. It's only natural for a man to get married, and to have children. But it _could_ have been helped, if he'd never sent Thaniel to the ball, if he'd told him to talk to Matsumoto. But he had let him go, and chosen to not mention Matsumoto, and now he couldn't even remember why. He thought he'd once known that Matsumoto would say something about him that frightened Thaniel, but how could that have ever seemed worse than this? 

And now Thaniel would leave. There had been futures where he hadn't, Mori had written them down. He'd read those entries so often he had them memorised. 

It would have been easier, he thought, not to know. He would still daydreamed of the two of them grown companionably old together, sitting in the drawing room and lamenting their bachelorhood, although only Thaniel would be sincere on that count. But there would have been less to regret.

Christ, wasn't there anything—there had to be something he could do. He paused at the top of the stairs. For a moment he considered throwing himself back down them and begging Thaniel to call it off. And...Thaniel would. He recalled it clearly. He would do it because Mori had asked. For one wonderful moment his heart soared until he remembered that Thaniel never forgave himself for it. Mori would keep him here, but he would be lost to Mori all the same.

He considered declaring that they should die together before dawn—lord knew there was precedent. But Chikamatsu was for the vulgar masses, and if Shakespeare was anything by which to judge the English preferred that _everyone_ in their romantic tragedies perish, which Mori felt was overwrought. And he could only imagine what the Haverlys would do, if they were to look out their window and see Mori tying Thaniel to a tree as though this were _The Lovers' Suicide at Sonezaki_ and not modern-day London at...he remembered trees.

It would be cold and Thaniel would be hanging pears on the trees in the garden—no, at the house at Kensington. Dear God, he wouldn't actually mean to propose to Thaniel that the two of them—no, in fact, he was there to see Carrow. She was in the basement, there were instruments, chemicals, there had been mishaps before and he could easily remember that all it would take— _no_. 

He tried, tentatively, to recall the wedding and still did not. That had been a cause for cautious hope, once, but it was growing clearer that it would happen, because he could remember so much about Thaniel's life afterwards. There just wasn't any future in which he would attend. I'm a Buddhist, he would tell Thaniel in a few days' time. It was easy to be Buddhist, when you could watch everyone's karma unfold as clearly as though it already had. 

In Hagi, he had risen each morning to the sound of monks chanting the sutras in the temple beneath the castle walls: _All phenomena are like a dream, a phantom, an insubstantial drop of dew, a bolt of lightning that flashes and is gone._ That includes this too, he thought, listening to the crackle of the fire in the grate and the silence that was Thaniel sitting quietly beside it. He wished he could have pretended otherwise. 

It cannot be helped, he thought again. This was not an event he could walk around, at least not into any future he would want. Having admitted it, all the other possibilities blinked out of existence. He went into his bedroom. As he shut the door, the future snapped into focus. 

They would go to bed. He would wake up the next morning and speak to Thaniel in Japanese as though nothing were about to change. Thaniel would struggle to express that he was relating something he'd heard from someone else, but Mori could use the newspaper article about Parliament to explain it. He would bake sour cherry scones. If he got them into the oven early enough, the kitchen would smell heavenly by the time Thaniel came down and he would linger longer than usual.

They would sit across from one another at the table and discuss...an American named Whistler, lately inducted into some artist's society or other. He had pretensions to improve on Oriental art and had—or would—meet Thaniel at the Foreign Office, Mori wasn't quite clear on that point yet. They would argue amiably over whether the man was a genius or a hack, with their formations drawn up along predictable battle lines. Thaniel would make an enthusiastic point. His knee would bump against Mori's. The kitchen table was cramped; it didn't mean anything. Mori would let him go on just long enough that he'd think himself about to carry the day, then pack him off in a rush to the Foreign Office in just enough time that he wouldn't be late.

**Author's Note:**

> Your observation about Mori's self control and his having already given up on the future he wants really struck a chord with me. Thank you for the opportunity to explore it here. And stay strong, Mori! There's a thirty-eighth world where it all works out.


End file.
